Chapter 3 Unified knowledge content management model
3.2 UKCM model
3.2 UKCM model
Knowledge management framework in museums not only aims to manage these knowledge assets but also to manage the processes that act upon the assets. These processes include developing, preserving, using and sharing knowledge [55, 59]. This study proposes a unified knowledge-based content management (UKCM) model (see Figure 3.1) to extend the UCS and achieve knowledge management among various domains and for long-term digital museum applications developing perspective. The three components in this model are unified knowledge content processes, an integrated knowledge-based content management system and multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures. The three components are described briefly below and are detailed in the following Sections.
Figure 3.1 Unified knowledge-based content management model
The unified knowledge content process functions as a common workflow among participants and projects that includes knowledge content collection, digitization, editing, organizing, publishing and accessing stages.
The multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures define the spectrum of knowledge content for all participants to follow, from core knowledge elements to advanced and innovative elements. A core knowledge element is the basis of knowledge content and comprises a multimedia object and semantic metadata. Advanced and innovative elements are further manually authored or automatically inferred from existing content.
The integrated knowledge-based content management system works to integrate the entire system. This system comprises the creation subsystem for constructing vocabulary, metadata, content and the classification hierarchy; the management subsystem for managing the entire knowledge content and resources for creation and publishing, and the publishing subsystem to transfer the authored content into the publishing structure and Web pages for
Aside from those advantages shown by Rockley such as faster time to publish, better use of resources, reduced costs, improved quality and usability of content, increased opportunities to innovate, improved workplace satisfaction and increased customer satisfaction, additional benefits from the proposed model for digital archives projects in museums include the following:
z Establishing a knowledge-based content creation, management and publication process to closely connect the collaboration among knowledge and IT specialists for all projects.
z Constructing an integrated, formal, explicit domain knowledge system to unify and integrate all domain specialists under a common conceptual model.
z Providing standard and consistent multi-layer knowledge content structures for specialists to fully express and create their spectrum of knowledge content.
z Integrating and managing knowledge content created from projects, specialists and applications centrally for others to share and to reuse.
z Improving the effectiveness of business for museums and satisfying the needs of audiences.
3.3 Unified knowledge content processes
In Rockley’s UCS, the unified processes eliminate the silo walls and create a collaborative environment to ensure that authors are aware of reusable content and for all departments to follow a repeatable and transparent workflow. For museums, unified knowledge content processes must be defined providing common and collaborative workflows among knowledge specialists, IT specialists and museum users. Knowledge specialists require a standard, consistent, repeatable, sharable and transparent environment to
collect, digitize, edit and organize knowledge content. IT specialists require an integrated and collaborative system development environment to design an efficient, automatic, scalable, and interoperable system for supporting content creation, management, and publication. Users require organized, categorized, integrated and systematic knowledge content via classification hierarchy browsing and metadata searching across related domains.
To satisfy the needs of knowledge specialists, IT specialists and users, all specialists must follow a standard process to create and maintain knowledge content with well-defined knowledge content structures autonomously. The unified knowledge content processes can be regarded as a life cycle that comprises knowledge content collecting, digitizing, editing, organizing, publishing, and accessing phases (see Figure 3.2).
Figure 3.2 The unified knowledge content processes The major tasks of each phase are summarized as follows:
To express the knowledge concepts for a particular application and user group, the variety of knowledge element must be decided in advance.
To collect original materials such as slides, photographs, audio, video, or documents for the target content type and prepared under a standard knowledge content structure.
2. Digitizing stage
To digitize the original materials into digital objects using standard formats.
To assign a meaningful and unique object identifier for each digital object.
3. Editing stage
To interpret each digital object with semantic metadata to make it a core knowledge element.
To store core knowledge elements in the core knowledge element repository for further organization and reuse.
4. Organizing stage
To reuse and organize core knowledge elements into advanced knowledge elements, which can be a multimedia document, knowledge unit, knowledge group, and knowledge network.
To use a multimedia document composed of a set of digital objects for interpreting a subject relating to an artifact.
To organize a set of multimedia documents into a knowledge unit for interpreting an artifact.
To arrange a set of knowledge units to create a knowledge group with the same characteristics for a particular exhibition topic.
To link the above elements to other related elements to form a knowledge network.
To store multimedia documents, knowledge units and knowledge groups in advanced knowledge repositories with their semantic metadata to be reused and shared among specialists and applications.
5. Publishing stage
To justify knowledge content before delivering to users.
To convert each knowledge element into XML-based content structure by the system.
To allow specialists to assign a presentation template to each knowledge element.
To generate Web pages from combining the XML-based content and the specified presentation template.
6. Accessing stage
To allow users to access knowledge content through an integrated semantic classification hierarchy-based browsing interface to share the common knowledge concepts with specialists.
To design a metadata query interface for each knowledge repository for each domain.
To publish knowledge content from various domains through a unified knowledge portal.
3.4 Multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures
In Rockley’s UCS, the reusable content is limited in documents that can be broken down into the smallest reusable object (section, paragraph, and sentence). For a museum, the
video and sound, or anything that will probably be organized and published across an inter-, intra- and/or extranet. Two major considerations must be made when constructing knowledge content for museums. One of these is how to create a versatile and complete structural representation; the other is how knowledge can be reused among specialists and various applications. To provide a content creation and organization model that enables the sharing and reuse of content among specialists of coexistent domains, knowledge content must be expressed in formal and consistent structures, by which the entire spectrum of knowledge content from basic to complex can be expressed and organized efficiently and completely.
Therefore, this study defines a multi-layer reusable knowledge content structure to facilitate specialists to organize knowledge content from a core knowledge element into advanced or innovative knowledge elements (see Figure 3.3).
Figure 3.3 The multi-layer reusable content structures
Core knowledge elements are created during the editing phase; advanced knowledge elements are organized in the organizing phase manually; however, the system, exploiting
data mining techniques, dynamically and automatically discovers, organizes and classifies innovation knowledge elements. From the requirements of content recreation and maintenance, authorized specialists can change and reorganize any knowledge content at will.
The structures of core, advanced and innovative knowledge element are described below:
z Core knowledge element
A core knowledge element is a basic and individual multimedia object (image, audio, video, text, animation or 3D object) associated with semantic metadata that interprets the context of a multimedia object.
z Advanced knowledge element
An advanced knowledge element is further organized from a set of core knowledge elements. An advanced knowledge element can be a multimedia document, a knowledge unit, a knowledge group or a knowledge network. A multimedia document is set of core knowledge elements for describing a topic relating to an artifact. A knowledge unit possesses hierarchical structures and is employed to organize all relating topics that are organized as multimedia documents. A knowledge group is formed by a set of knowledge units having the same characteristics for presenting a research, education, or exhibition topic. The cross-relationships between any pair of the above various elements within intra domain or inter domains can be specified by specialists with links to form a knowledge network.
z Innovative knowledge element
A large amount of implicit and correlating knowledge exists among coexistent domains. Innovation knowledge elements can be built automatically from core and advanced knowledge elements. Innovative knowledge elements have the same structures as advanced knowledge elements. The difference is that innovative
advanced knowledge elements the process is manual.
3.5 Integrated knowledge-based content management system
Content Management attempts to follow a given model for effectively creating, editing, managing, and publishing content [68]. Knowledge can be regarded as a kind of content to be managed. Content management can be considered as an infrastructure to amass and distribute knowledge [9].
No single list of the best requirements exists for a content management system. Every organization has its own needs. A classification scheme comprising content creation, content management, and publication and presentation has worked well for museums. The major requirements of content creation include integrated authoring environment, separation of content and presentation, multi-layer content structure, multi-user authoring, content reusing, metadata creation and powerful cross-linking. The key requirements of content management include version control, effective indexing, manage diverse content, integration with coexistent domains, adequate security and pro-active reports. The major requirements of publication and presentation include page templates, exchange support, and effective accessibility.
Considering the unique content management and knowledge management viewpoint of museums, the knowledge-based content management system includes the content creation subsystem, the content management subsystem, and the design of the publishing and presentation subsystem (see Figure 3.4).
Figure 3.4 The architecture knowledge-based content management system (adapted from Rockley’s)
The functionalities of each subsystem are described as follows:
(1) The content creation subsystem
z Editing the global classification hierarchy for various domains z Editing core knowledge content elements with semantic metadata z Organizing advanced knowledge content elements
(2) The content management subsystem
z Managing indexing structures of knowledge content z Managing metadata repositories
z Managing vocabulary repositories
z Managing core and advanced knowledge content repositories
z Managing authoring template databases (3) The publication and presentation subsystem
z Converting knowledge elements into XML-based content structure
z Publishing Web pages from XML-based content and assigned XSL templates z Building the classification hierarchy-based browsing structure
z Creating the metadata-based query interfaces
3.6 Conceptual modeling
Conceptual modeling means identifying relevant concepts of the real world with an abstract model. Conceptual modeling intends to integrate different views of an organization into one global and consistent model where entities and relationships are explicitly defined.
The conceptual modeling of a unified knowledge-based content management system for digital archives in the proposed model is designed to construct both enterprise domain knowledge systems and multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures by adopting a thorough syntax, a semantic tool, and models that concretely express and interpret them.
The ER Model (ERM) can be considered to be the ancestor of all modern modeling methods [14]. Since its original inception ERM has derived many descendents aimed at enhancing the conceptual design of relational databases. Due to the popularity of the object-oriented programming concept, the Object-Oriented Model (OOM) [25] and Extended Entity-Relationship Model (EERM) [71] have been proposed. EERM possesses the features of ERM and OOM, including aggregation abstraction, generalization abstraction, and association abstraction. Aggregation abstraction defines a PART-OF relationship between an entity and its components. Generalization abstraction defines a subset or IS-A relationship between entities, and establishes a hierarchy from a generic entity to its subsets. Association abstraction defines a multi-valued feature of attributes. Due to the many advantages of EERM,
it has been applied in the conceptual modeling of database applications [7, 26]. Huang [42]
also successfully applied EERM to conceptually model the multimedia databases of museum applications. This Study also uses EERM as a conceptual modeling tool in this paper.
3.6.1 Conceptual modeling of enterprise domain knowledge system
The conceptual modeling of a knowledge system (see Figure 3.5) across domains and applications in a museum can be summarized as having the following features.
z A top-down approach is used to construct the global knowledge system across domains.
z The relationships and constraints can be constructed between entities within a domain or across domains.
z The attributes of knowledge content can be specified as metadata annotated by specialists of each domain.
z To support efficient administration and personalized services, profiles of specialists and users must be specified.
After completing the system conceptual design, the knowledge hierarchy and relationships in a domain or between domains can be organized to construct the global knowledge system. The knowledge system can be constructed for application requirements and can also be viewed as the knowledge classification hierarchy system (Guarino, 1995) to represent them. The knowledge classification hierarchy system plays the common view among specialists and users. The knowledge element entities contain a set of core and advanced knowledge elements specified in Section 3.4. The next section reveals their conceptual modeling process.
3.5 The conceptual modeling of enterprise knowledge system
3.6.2 Conceptual modeling of multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures
The multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures shown in Section 3.4 provides a set of formal structures from elementary to complex for specialists to express and organize knowledge content for particular concepts. The knowledge element entity denotes the superclass of all knowledge content, and comprises the core knowledge elements, the advanced knowledge elements and the innovative elements.
The core entity denotes the class of core knowledge elements, each of which is a set of multimedia objects with semantic metadata. The multimedia object entity encompasses the entities of image, audio, video, text and animation. An instance of the advanced entity comprises a set of instances in the core entity. The advanced entity comprises of the
multimedia document subclass, the knowledge unit subclass and the knowledge group subclass. The instance of the latter subclass is organized from a set of instances of the former subclass. Section 3.4 details the usage of the above three subclasses. Any instance in the core entity, advanced entity, or innovative entity may have a set of related link to instances of itself or to others to form a set of knowledge networks. The innovative entity with the same types of instances is inferred from the core and advanced entity. The conceptual modeling of multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures is shown as Figure 3.6.
Figure 3.6 The conceptual modeling of multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures
3.7 A practical implementation
The unified knowledge content management approach for a digital archives project has been implemented in the National Museum of Natural Science (NMNS) in Taiwan
NDAP introduced in Section 1.5. A total of fifteen domains in zoology, botany, geology and anthropology participate in the digital archives project of NMNS. All domains are coordinated and integrated by the information technology integration project to achieve unified processes, content structures, and knowledge-based management system development.
The unified process shown in Section 3.3, including the collecting, digitizing, editing, organizing, publishing, and accessing phases has been specified through discussions. All specialists in each domain must follow the standards and specifications of each stage. A single and integrated knowledge-based content management system (KCMS) was developed, by which the content creation, management, and publication described in Section 3.5 was fulfilled collaboratively among all content specialists and IT specialists. A multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures including core, advanced, and innovative knowledge elements defined in Section 3.4 was designed. These structures are managed and maintained by KCMS. All specialists applied them to edit, organize, and maintain content under a standard and consistent process. All the finished and verified content created by specialists was converted into XML-based content structures for publication. All knowledge content constructed under a single global classification hierarchy-based system and the interchange formats among institutes was also converted into XML-based structures. The XML-based content with assigned XSL templates was transformed into Web pages during accessing.
Users could access content through the integrated knowledge portal through a classification hierarchy-based browsing and metadata search query interface. Figure 3.7 shows the entire implementation system. Figure 3.8 shows the global concept hierarchy and metadata creation.
Figure 3.9 shows the creation of a core knowledge unit. Figure 3.10 shows the creation of an advance knowledge unit. Figure 3.11 shows an example of knowledge unit for interpreting the knowledge content of a species of vascular plant. Figure 3.12 shows an example of organizing a knowledge group for present an exhibition topic of vascular plant by the color of their flower. Figure 3.13 shows an example of organizing a knowledge network for present an
relating knowledge units between insect and vascular plant.
Figure 3.7 Implementation system of UKCM model
Figure 3.9 Creating a core knowledge element
Figure 3.10 Authoring an advanced knowledge element
Figure 3.11 An example of knowledge unit of a species of vascular plant
Figure 3.12 Authoring a knowledge group
Figure 3.13 Authoring a knowledge network
Chapter 4
Knowledge-based ubiquitous learning service model
4.1 Introduction
Using the UKCM model described in Chapter 3, large quantities of knowledge content can be created and managed via a unified approach. Based the unified knowledge bases, numerous applications can be developed through system generation or art design. However, this approach remains inadequate to fulfill the goals of creating a knowledge-based digital museum. This chapter establishes a ubiquitous learning service model that reuses and extends the content of unified knowledge bases to achieve the goals of the knowledge-based digital museum. The ontological knowledge base layer of the KBDM framework can further be constructed by applying ontology to represent the unified knowledge bases in addition to user context and usage. Not only does it cover ubiquitous, proactive, adaptive, and collaborative properties, but this application can also efficiently reuse and diffuse large quantities of knowledge content. Consequently, the adaptive service agent layer and ubiquitous digital museum service layer in the KBDM framework are constructed in a manner that does not include the knowledge discovery module. The details are presented below.
Museums attempt to create a learning environment by using digital technologies to produce and deliver knowledge. The resulting learning environment exists both onsite as digital interactive content, and online on Web sites [33, 35]. The rapid evolution of information and communication technologies encourages museums worldwide to develop mobile learning solutions by creating extra channels for users with mobile handheld devices to supplement conventional docent and audio guides, and current digital technologies [29, 52,
way that museums interact with visitors. Some applications designed for mobile devices can enhance visitor experience in museums [28, 41, 56, 67, 86, 87]. However, most mobile learning projects for museums, particularly in Taiwan, have not successfully developed of onsite tour guide applications for exhibitions. A friendly interface, attractive application [64, 87], multimedia presentation [86], and interactive accessibility [49, 56] are major concerns in such projects. Very few projects combine museum-wide content and services with related domains, applications and projects to create a ubiquitous, proactive and adaptive learning service. Therefore, most relevant knowledge cannot be integrated and reused; the learning content is uniform and constrained to particular domains; the learning environment is restricted in locations of museums, and services cannot be adapted to individual learners.
This study addresses some major factors in addition to these general design factors.
Major factors include the type and subject of a museum (art, history or science), audience types and their requirements (student, teacher, general public or expert), integration of related content resources (collection, exhibition, education and entertainment) and the integration of service and business models with the physical museum (inside and outside the museum). This
Major factors include the type and subject of a museum (art, history or science), audience types and their requirements (student, teacher, general public or expert), integration of related content resources (collection, exhibition, education and entertainment) and the integration of service and business models with the physical museum (inside and outside the museum). This